Your all-in-one guide to SEO and how it can benefit you

Selecting an SEO tool on computer

Your all-in-one guide to SEO and how it can help your business today

Are you spending too much time trying to wrap your head around complicated blogs with no consideration for the average reader? Are you having trouble understanding Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) concepts? Or are you a small business owner that has little experience with SEO but wants to understand and benefit from it?

Well look no further, our group at Purple Giraffe have compiled an ultimate guide for you to achieve your SEO goals. From introducing what SEO is and discussing SEO strategies to selecting the right SEO tool for your business, we hope to simplify your SEO process by sharing our own learnings.

After reading this blog, we hope you will be able to answer the following questions

  1. What is “SEO content”?
  2. How can I implement an effective SEO strategy for my business?
  3. How should I select the best SEO tool for my business?

What is SEO Content?​

To understand SEO content, let’s break down the phrase into its component parts:

  • “SEO” refers to search engine optimisation, or the process of optimising a website so people can easily find it via search engines like Google, or Bing.
  • By “content,” we mean any information that lives on the web and can be consumed on the web.

In a nutshell: SEO content is any content created to attract search engine traffic.

A website that is relevant to a search query and contains higher quality content will rank higher in a search engine and ultimately attract more visitors to your site.

How can I implement an effective SEO strategy for my business?​

SEO implementation falls under 2 main categories, on-page and off-page SEO

  • On-page SEO is the optimisation of each page on a website to rank higher in search rankings using a range of strategies designed to increase your site traffic.
  • Off-page SEO is centred around driving traffic to your site from other sites. This is mostly dependent on other websites that link to yours, and is less controllable than on-page SEO.

By implementing SEO strategies that belong to each of these categories, your business will give itself the best chance of ranking highly in search engine results pages.

 

So, what can you do to optimise your web content for search engines?

Let us consider 7 key principles:

  1. Keyword research
  2. Keyword analysis
  3. Link checking
  4. Backlink auditing
  5. Site speed
  6. SERP snippet preview
  7. Site auditing
Keyword research: Finding search queries that are highly searched for and generate large amounts of site traffic.

 

Keyword research generally requires an online tool to find words or phrases that are relevant to what your site offers (for example, Ahrefs keyword generator). By searching for a query, it provides the keyword difficulty (how hard it is to rank in the top 10), search volume (monthly estimate) and when the analytics were last updated.

We advise using long-tail keywords, as they are generally less competitive and an easy way to rank higher in organic search results. Many long-tail keywords have high search volumes with little to no competition, and can provide a significant boost to your site traffic.

 

Keyword analysis: Analysing how well your site’s keywords are performing by site traffic generated.

 

If you already have an SEO tool at your disposal, keyword analysis is imperative to ensure your website is always generating the most traffic it can. By using the keyword analysis tool in a tool like Semrush you can see the search volume per month, the traffic % that visited your website for the given keyword and where you rank for a particular keyword.

Using this information, you can keep or remove certain keywords based on their overall performance and the value they bring to your site. Continually keeping up with keyword trends is a great way to stay on top of search engine results and get the most visitors to your website.

 

Link checking: Ensuring any links on your web pages work as intended.

 

Making sure links on your website work is an easy way to keep visitors browsing and engaged. If you were browsing a website and clicked on a broken link, how likely would you be to consider it reliable and a good site?

Using a tool like SEO Minion provides an easy way to check links on any page, and group them into different categories based on their behaviour (working, broken, redirect etc.) and highlights them on the page. 

By fixing links with unintended behaviour, you can easily prevent customers from turning away from your website over an issue that requires very little technical competency to fix.

 

Backlink auditing: Reviewing what websites link to your website, and whether they are a benefit or detriment to your search rankings

 

Backlink auditing requires the use of a third-party tool like Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool to display a list of domains that link to your website, and a toxicity score which is assigned based on the quality of that website.

A higher toxicity score indicates a worse link, and these poor links are often detrimental to your search rankings as they result in penalties from search engine algorithms. 

By removing toxic links, your website’s “reputation” within search engines will improve and positively affect other website’s evaluations of yours when it comes to link building and sharing your content.

 

Site speed: Optimising the images and code on your website to decrease its loading time.

 

If you were browsing a website that took 10 seconds to load, how likely are you to keep using it? Site speed is an important factor in keeping customers interested in browsing your website, and this can be done through optimising areas of the website such as the images or code present on your webpages.

This process can be tedious if you are not experienced in this area, so using a tool like PageSpeed Insights can help you to fix these issues with their intuitive display and explanation of each issue found in your website.

 

SERP snippet preview: Editing your page title and description to describe what your site offers in a way that Google displays correctly.

 

While the majority of SEO work is on your website, factoring in how your website is shown in Google is crucial in drawing attention from customers. By including a relevant page title and description which match what your website offers, it makes it clear to customers that you offer what they are looking for and increases your conversion rate (ratio of site visitors to paying visitors).

This can be done using a tool like SerpSIM which shows a preview of how your website shows up in Google’s search results, and it offers to fetch your current preview or to insert your own and see how it would look.

By using SerpSIM, you can easily construct your page titles and descriptions to fit within Google’s character limits and take advantage of all the characters allowed.

 

Site auditing: Reviewing all pages of your site to find improvements. For example keywords, page content or usability across devices.

 

Putting together all the factors we have discussed above and more, a site audit is a full-scale analysis of your website along with all the SEO features that can affect your search rankings. 

While this is an overall principle rather than an individual factor to optimise, it is necessary to conduct occasional site audits to make sure every part of your site is working as it should be and is up-to-date with the best SEO practices available.

Selecting the best SEO tool for me

Now that we have introduced the concept of SEO and different strategies you can use, we will discuss the benefits of using a third-party SEO tool and what you should think about when selecting an SEO tool for your business. By the end of this section, you should be able to explain what factors need to be considered when searching for an SEO tool that can benefit your business.

Why should I use an SEO tool?​

Here’s a quick list of benefits to using an SEO tool:

  • Breakdown of data sorted by different SEO strategies
  • Alleviates the process of manually doing the whole site audit
  • Time saved, the data collection process is done by the tool
  • Easy to understand the data presented
  • Data presented is based on real statistics, not guesses as to how a site performs
  • Manage multiple websites from one platform

How do I select the right SEO tool for me?​

With all the SEO tools available on the market, it can be easy to get swept away and pick a tool that superficially looks good but doesn’t meet your business needs.

By being more specific about what you want to get out of the SEO tool, it can greatly reduce the scope of your search to tools that perform well for the areas that matter to you. Consider the following:

Which of the following are priorities for your SEO plan?

  • Keyword research
  • Backlink analysis and link opportunities
  • Site crawling
  • Number of users on the plan
  • Site speed
  • An all-in-one, or a specialised tool
  • Price point

While the list above addresses individual factors, it is important to note that certain factors can be linked such as price point and the number of users. We at Purple Giraffe had to factor this scenario into our plans, as most tools charge additional fees for multiple users meaning the price point had to factor in the base cost of the tool, as well as the cost of adding extra users to the plan.

Your business priorities affect the tools that would benefit you the most, for example if your priority is backlink analysis and finding websites to share your content Ahrefs is one of the best tools in the market. With its database of backlinks which is second only to Google, it is clearly one of the best tools to meet your needs.

What do we recommend?

Here is a short list of our favourite tools for fulfilling your SEO priorities

Feature breakdown

 

Semrush

Ahrefs

Moz Pro

Woorank

WebCEO

SEO powersuite

Keyword research
      

Find top keywords

Find related keywords and phrases

 

View which sites rank on SERP

 

Find top keywords in a country

  

View keyword rankings over time

 

Side-by-side keyword ranking comparison with competitors

 

Search for keywords on other search engines (beside Google)

 

 

Organic research
      

Keyword trends

 

Estimated traffic

 

Positions report (best performing keywords)

    

Position changes (within a site)

 

Competitors report

 

 

Pages report (site pages in top 100 Google results)

 

 

Subdomain report (positions in top 100)

  

 

View competitor keywords

View organic competitors (competiting domains in top 20)

 

Compare domain position changes with competitor sites

Organic traffic insights (need GA & GSC)

N/A

    

View site performance over time

  

 

Connect with GA and GSC to show hidden keywords

   

 

Analyse site interaction for desktop and mobile

   

 
Site auditing
      

Check site crawlability

Compare site crawls

     

Schedule site audits

Crawls weekly automatically

Check page loading speed

  

Analyse log files (upload, and view metrics in a graph format)

     

Check page links

 

Check security (HTTPS)

     
On page SEO checker
      

Check if compliant with Google

Get suggestions on improvement

 

Compare to competitor sites

 

Compare pages at URL or subfolder level

 

    
SERP tracking
      
Position tracking
      

Ranking distribution (compare rankings in top organic results)

 

Sensor

      

View SERP volatility to predict Google ranking algorithm changes

     
Backlink analysis
      

Backlink audit

      

Audit toxic backlinks

 

Remove backlinks

 

Disavow backlinks

 

Find new and lost backlinks

  

 
Backlink analytics
      

Analyse competitor backlinks

  

Measure domain authority, based on links in/out

 

  

Check all backlinks in/out

View Authority Score (how well does the referring domain rank?)

 
Backlink gap analysis
      

Find sites with most relevant backlinks to your service/product

  

Check domains which link to competitor and their quality

Find backlink opportunities (identify best targets to reach out to)

 

Bulk analysis
      

Search and compare up to 200 domain’s backlink profiles

     
Link building
      

Find sites that fit your organic keywords and link to rival sites or your site

Plans and pricing​

 

Cost (Monthly or Annually)

Included users

Additional user fees

Semrush

[USD]

 

[USD]

Pro

119.95(M), 99.95(A)

1

$45 each

Guru

229.95(M), 191.62(A)

1

$80 each

Business

449.95(M), 374.95(A)

1

$100 each

Ahrefs

[USD]

 

[USD]

Lite

99(M)/82(A)

1

30(M)/300(A)

Standard

179(M)/149(A)

1

30(M)/300(A)

Advanced

399(M)/332(A)

3

30(M)/300(A)

Agency

999(M)/832(A)

5

30(M)/300(A)

Moz Pro
   

[USD]

Standard

99/79

1

49/49 each month

Medium

149/119

1

49/49 each month

Large

249/199

3

49/49 each month

Premium

599/479

5

49/49 each month

Woorank

[USD]

   

Pro

59.99/39.17

1

N/A

Premium

179.99/119.17

1

N/A

Enterprise

Negotiable

Negotiable

Negotiable

WebCEO

[USD]

   

Solo

35/29

1

N/A

Startup

99/74

Unlimited

Free

Corporate

299/224

Unlimited

Free

Agency unlimited

99+/74+ (calculator available for more accurate estimate)

https://www.webceo.com/online-seo-tools-price.htm#pro-calculator

Unlimited

Free

SEO Powersuite

[AUD]

   

Free

0

1

N/A

Professional

459 (A)

1

N/A, 1 license can be used by many as long as only 1 person at a time

Enterprise

1069 (A)

1

N/A, 1 license can be used by many as long as only 1 person at a time

Feeling confused by all the details and numbers? Reach out to Purple Giraffe today to discuss your possibilities, and walk out feeling more confident in your business goals!

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Vishal Narayan

Vishal Narayan

Vishal is currently studying Software Engineering at the University of Adelaide and brings a detail-focused approach with an avid interest in learning. Using his technical background, Vishal is currently an SEO intern at Purple Giraffe, helping small businesses to understand the concepts behind SEO as well as how they can use SEO tools to their advantage.

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